CHY 4U1 – Image Analysis
The Enlightenment – Locke & Rousseau
John Locke
[The legislature’s power] is limited to the public good of the
society. It is a power that hath no other end but preservation, and
therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or
designedly to impoverish the subjects…To this end it is that men
give up all their natural power…and the community put the
legislative power into such hands as they think fit, with this trust,
that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace,
quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty as it was in
the state of nature. - Second Treatise on Government
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Thus the people’s deputies are not and could not be its
representatives; they are merely its agents and they cannot
decide anything finally. Any law which the people has not
ratified in person is void; it is not law at all. The English
people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is
free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as
soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved.
- The Social Contract.
Discussing the Illustration:
1) Enlightenment Thinkers asked many questions about society. But they rarely agreed on the
answers. John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau did agree that government exists only to
protect the rights of the individual. But they differed in many ways – as they do here on the
value of representative government. Explain what “representative government” is and how
the two men differed over it.
2) One of these two men had a huge influence on the founders of the U.S. Government. Which
one? Why do you think America’s founders were influenced more by one than the other?
3) Some people say Rousseau’s ideas are much more democratic than Locke’s. But critics of
Rousseau disagree. They say Rousseau’s ideas are not only unrealistic, but also likely to lead
to either anarchy or a kind of “tyranny of the majority”. What do you suppose these critics
mean? With which of these views do you agree more? Why?